Vivien Ho
According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, as of April 23, there were 3,748 cases of COVID-19 in Iowa.
Halfway across the world, the impact wasn’t immediate. It all started in late December, when a few individuals in Wuhan, China were diagnosed with pneumonia from an unknown cause. As cases spread throughout the world and death tolls soared, on March 11 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global pandemic. Eventually, the virus reached Iowa City. By then, scientists had given the ominous new threat a name: the coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19.